The intercom chimed. “Admiral Fenross wants to see you immediately, sir.”
“Now he tells me,” grunted Flandry. “I wanted to see him yesterday, when I got back.”
“He was busy then, sir,” said the robot, as glibly as if it had a conscious mind. “His lordship the Earl of Sidrath is visiting Terra, and wished to be conducted through the operations center.”
Flandry rose, adjusted his peacock-blue tunic, admired the crease of his gold-frogged white trousers, and covered his sleek hair with a jewel-banded officer’s cap. “Of course,” he said, “Admiral Fenross couldn’t possibly delegate the tour to an aide.”
“The Earl of Sidrath is related to Grand Admiral the Duke of Asia,” the robot reminded him.
Flandry sang beneath his breath, “Brown is the color of my true love’s nose,” and went out the door. After a series of slide-ways and gravshafts, he reached Fenross’ office.
The admiral nodded his close-cropped head beyond the desk. “There you are.” His tone implied Flandry had stopped for a beer on the way. “Sit down. Your preliminary verbal report on the Jovian mission has been communicated to me. Is that really all you could find out?”
Flandry smiled. “You told me to get an indication, one way or another, of the Ymirite attitude, sir,” he purred. “That’s what I got: an indication, one way or another.”
Fenross gnawed his lip. “All right, all right. I should have known, I guess. Your forte never was working with an organization, and we’re going to need a special project, a very large project, to learn the truth about Ymir.”
Flandry sat up straight. “Don’t,” he said sharply.
“What?”
“Don’t waste men that way. Sheer arithmetic will defeat them. Jupiter alone has the area of a hundred Terras. The population must be more or less proportional. How are our men going to percolate around, confined to the two or three spaceships that Thua has available for them? Assuming Thua doesn’t simply refuse to admit any further oxygen-breathing nuisances. How are they going to question, bribe, eavesdrop, get any single piece of information? It’s a truism that the typical Intelligence job consists of gathering a million unimportant little facts and fitting them together into one big fact. We’ve few enough agents as is, spread ghastly thin. Don’t tie them up in an impossible job. Let them keep working on Merseia, where they’ve a chance of accomplishing something!”
“And if Ymir suddenly turns on us?” snapped Fenross.
“Then we roll with the punch. Or we die.” Flandry shrugged and winced; his muscles were still sore from the pounding they had taken. “But haven’t you thought, sir, this whole business may well be a Merseian stunt—to divert our attention from them, right at this crisis? It’s exactly the sort of bear trap Aycharaych loves to set.”
“That may be,” admitted Fenross. “But Merseia lies beyond Syrax; Jupiter is next door. I’ve been given to understand that His Imperial Majesty is alarmed enough to desire—” He shrugged too, making it the immemorial gesture of a baffled underling.
“Who dropped that hint?” drawled Flandry. “Surely not the Earl of Sidrath, whom you were showing the sights yesterday while the news came in that Vixen had fallen?”
“Shut up!” Almost, it was a scream. A jag of pain went over Fenross’ hollowed countenance. He reached for a pill. “If I didn’t oblige the peerage,” he said thickly, “I’d be begging my bread in Underground and someone would be in this office who’d never tell them no.”
Flandry paused. He started a fresh cigaret with unnecessary concentration. I suppose I am being unjust to him, he thought. Poor devil. It can’t be much fun being Fenross.
Still, he reflected, Aycharaych had left the Solar System so smoothly that the space ambush had never even detected his boat. Twenty-odd hours ago, a battered scoutship had limped in to tell the Imperium that Vixen had perforce surrendered to its nameless besiegers, who had landed en masse after reducing the defenses. The last dispatch from Syrax described clashes which had cost the Terrans more ships than the Merseians. Jupiter blazed a mystery in the evening sky. Rumor said that after his human guests had left, Ruethen and his staff had rolled out huge barrels of bitter ale and caroused like trolls for many hours; they must have known some reason to be merry.